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President Barack Obama threw red meat to his political base on Tuesday with a promise to do the nearly impossible: solve the problem of widening U.S. income inequality.

Faced with the very real possibility of losing the White House in November, Obama used his State of the Union address to demand a tax increase for millionaires and launch an aggressive campaign arc built upon economic fairness.

“No debate is more important,” Obama said early in his hour-long speech before a joint session of Congress.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

In recent months, Obama had made clear he would mine the vein of resentment in America over the growing income gap, the source of inspiration for last year’s Occupy Wall Street movement that highlighted the concentration of wealth among 1 percent of the population.

But by choosing to make it the cornerstone of his annual speech to the nation, he cemented the theme of working for the 99 percent as his campaign battlecry for the next 10 months.

He could not have chosen a better day to contrast his populist ideas with his possible Republican challenger.

Mitt Romney, one of the wealthiest presidential candidates in history, released tax returns on Tuesday that showed he and his wife paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010 and expect to pay a 15.4 percent effective tax rate for 2011.

Obama proposed a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for people who make $1 million or more a year, a clear shot at his would-be rival, even though he was unnamed in the speech.

“I think it’s one of the best cards he can play, especially given that Mitt Romney released his tax returns today,” said

Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

“People are worried about fairness in the tax code. So it seems to me that this is something where he has the rhetorical advantage.”

Senior administration officials said the 30 percent figure was established long before Romney’s tax rate was made public.

One noted, however, that not all wealthy people kept their money in accounts on the Cayman Islands, a dig at the former Massachusetts governor, whose advisers said his holdings included amounts in funds based in the Cayman Islands and other overseas entities.

POPULIST STRATEGY

Obama’s tax reform proposal, made on one of the biggest campaign stages of the year, is the latest in a series of moves the president has made to appeal to the middle class and to present a populist message.

The president’s fall deficit reduction proposals and recent appointment of a director to lead the consumer financial protection agency that is unpopular with Republicans have raised the temperature and highlighted the contrasts between him and the opposition party.

Nevertheless, the president knows he has almost no chance of getting his millionaire tax proposal through a divided Congress.

But the issue gives him a strong talking point to energize his political base, much of which has been disenchanted with his record.

“It’s a great issue for President Obama. It’s something that his base has been waiting for,” said Democratic strategist Bud Jackson. “He has started to move to a more combative approach in terms of contrasting himself with Republicans … and I also think that dovetails nicely with Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or whoever the nominee will be.”

The president will take the message on a five-state, three-day trip beginning on Wednesday.

The state choices are not coincidental. He is going to Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Michigan – all battlegrounds that could help decide the general election.

Officials said he would release more details about his business, energy, and college affordability proposals during the trip.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump, who dropped out of the GOP presidential race months before the first primary, now said he may reluctantly be forced to run as a third party candidate, a decision revealed Sunday on a special Miami broadcast of the CBS News program Face The Nation.

In an interview conducted Saturday night at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach with Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, Trump blasted Republican infighting, saying was hurting the party’s chances to beat President Obama in 2012.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s Republican against Republican, and yet the level of hatred, I guess you could say, I mean, there’s no other word for it, is unbelievable,” he told Schieffer. “The question is, are they hurting themselves? Are they hurting the party? Are they hurting the Republicans, and are they hurting their chances of winning an election against Barack Obama? And probably the answer is yes.”

While Trump said he thinks Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are both candidates who could beat President Obama, his concern about the infighting has him thinking how he might try to change the game if the GOP candidates weaken.

“I don’t see a person that, number one, is going to win,” he said, he may be forced to mount his own campaign.”I think people dislike the Republicans and the Democrats more than they ever have,” he added. “So I actually think the right Independent could win, and there was a poll about a month ago, you saw it, where I was the number one Independent choice.”